Archery In ICDEE

TheRaven476

I’m wondering Archery would be handled in IWDEE. BG1 & BG2 were like polar opposites for Archery. BG1 had great arrows, and the THACO differences made archery quite brutal (Easy hitting Acid arrows were king) spawning lots of Archery overpowered threads. BG1EE even exasperated the issue letting you play the Archery subclass…… (How low can your THACO go!) BG2 then went the opposite way, seriously nerfing arrows in addition to the naturally high level cap making the THACO differences significantly less meaningful.

What will IWDEE be like? I can’t remember how Vanilla IWD was. Will the arrows be BG2 style? A midway point between 1 & 2? Is the mid range level “Soft Cap” of IWD going to make Archery a good choice? Any thoughts?

Mathsorcerer

There are plenty of decent bows of all varieties in IWD, as well as arrows, to make archery worthwhile. Even if you don't have magical equipment yet nocking high quality arrows into a high quality longbow is definitely useful.

The best bows are probably Messenger of Sseth, Kaylessa's Bow, and either Long Bow +3: Repeater or Long Bow +4: Hammer (4 attacks per round).

elminster

Unlike BG2 vanilla IWD gave damage bonus to enchanted arrows.

Tolben

The game also has those cool entangle arrows, that you can find in the Severed Hand and in some other areas I believe.

Dazzu

Kaylessa's bow is rather meh. Giving up Elf Chain is not an acceptable substitute.

Crossbows are also good with a 3 APR Crossbow. The Hammer Longbow is... kinda wasteful. What 7+ warrior needs 4 APR to reach the cap anyway?

Mathsorcerer

The Hammer is best given to a bard or fighter/thief who isn't front-line tanking.

I always liked Kaylessa's Bow because my first IWD party had a character named Kaylisa. I was surprised when we ran into someone with almost the identical name, so she *had* to use that bow after that.

baldurskjd

There are two opportunities to get elven chain mail in the Severed Hand so I use Kaylessa's bow if I need it.

Dazzu

baldurskjd said:

There are two opportunities to get elven chain mail in the Severed Hand so I use Kaylessa's bow if I need it.

But there's a longbow of Action +2 that ALSO provides +1 dex in Severed hand. Your bard will appreciate the +1 dex more than your warrior, and there's a chance you might need more than 1 suit of Elf Chain. Think of it this way: Your elven chainmail will last your bard until the end of forever, Kaylessa's bow is replacable... why not go for the better chainmail that will last forever, or am I just talking crazy?

OlvynChuru

I hope that ranged combat in IWD:EE will be a bit more interesting than in the original. Most enemies in IWD can be kited extremely easily because all they do is walk up to you and attack you with melee weapons. Hopefully in the enhanced edition there will be more enemy archers and spellcasters or something that will make ranged combat more deep and less boring.

Quartz

And yet, in the end, it's random. So...

Vitor

Well... I never thought that BG2 was bad for archers. I just think we don't have good archers as we had in BG1. Truth is that I'm not trying archers in BG2... My archer is Imoen, with a Short Bow of Gesen.

But wouldn't a Lv. 15 Coran kick ass with a Mana Bow in BG. 2? I think he woul deal huge damage firing how much arrows per round? 4?

Jarrakul

Sadly, no. It's really hard to get damage bonuses with bows in BG2, so "huge damage" would end up being something like 4d6 +20 per round. Meanwhile, a fighter with a two-handed sword could be dealing about 1d10 +20 per attack, three times per round.

Mazzy is a great example of this. She's a fantastic archer, stat-wise, and even uses shortbows (which are much better than longbows in BG2 due to the magic bow selection), but she can't pull her weight as an archer because BG2 archery is just kind of bad.

Exception: The archer kit. Because the archer kit is basically a kensai with fewer disadvantages.

the_spyder

Dazzu said:

baldurskjd said:

There are two opportunities to get elven chain mail in the Severed Hand so I use Kaylessa's bow if I need it.

But there's a longbow of Action +2 that ALSO provides +1 dex in Severed hand. Your bard will appreciate the +1 dex more than your warrior, and there's a chance you might need more than 1 suit of Elf Chain. Think of it this way: Your elven chainmail will last your bard until the end of forever, Kaylessa's bow is replacable... why not go for the better chainmail that will last forever, or am I just talking crazy?

If you don't have need for two suits of elven chain, the question becomes moot.

Dazzu

the_spyder said:

Dazzu said:

baldurskjd said:

There are two opportunities to get elven chain mail in the Severed Hand so I use Kaylessa's bow if I need it.

But there's a longbow of Action +2 that ALSO provides +1 dex in Severed hand. Your bard will appreciate the +1 dex more than your warrior, and there's a chance you might need more than 1 suit of Elf Chain. Think of it this way: Your elven chainmail will last your bard until the end of forever, Kaylessa's bow is replacable... why not go for the better chainmail that will last forever, or am I just talking crazy?

If you don't have need for two suits of elven chain, the question becomes moot.

Precisely! The bard will need that +1 dex more than your archer will want to give up the Longbow of Sset's extra APR. Then again, most parties I can think of have at least one multi/dual mage AND a bard, so...